Vultures are not the most charismatic creatures on the planet, and certainly not the most beloved. Yet they have jobs to do in the world, cleaning, in one of their habitats, the veldt of southern Africa of carcasses.

Therein lies a rub, for the poachers who have been so vigorously killing rhinos and elephants, not wanting to advertise their activities to game wardens, have been poisoning the corpses so that the vultures, landing to dine on them, die rather than circle the killing site after taking their meal. Reports the BBC, at the current rate, vultures in southern Africa are in danger of extinction in 30 to 40 years—a fate that has very nearly been visited on the vultures of Asia, whose numbers have fallen by 99.9 percent in the last quarter-century.

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Dingoes are about as much liked in Australia as vultures are around the world, but in at least one respect they’ve gotten a bum rap. It has long been assumed that there are no Tasmanian devils on the Australian mainland because dingoes ate them all up some 3,000 years ago; the devils, as well as the thylacines, or Tasmanian tigers, survived on the island of Tasmania only because dingoes never colonized it; or so it has been thought. Researchers at the University of Adelaide, as Kara Rogers writes in the Britannica Blog, have determined that both climate change and the arrival of humans in Australia conspired to do in the devils—an inappropriately named species if ever there was one. There’s a wrinkle about the Tasmanian part of the name, too; as researcher Thomas Prowse notes, “Our results support the notion that thylacines and devils persisted on Tasmania not because the dingo was absent, but because human density remained low there and Tasmania was less affected by abrupt climate changes.”

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In late August, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared that a curious event occurring this summer along the East Coast was an “unusual mortality event”: namely, bottlenose dolphins were dying off in record, inexplicable numbers nine times the historical average, in fact. The likely culprit: a morbillivirus, a kind of malady-inducing virus that causes measles in humans, distemper in dogs, and rinderpest in cattle. The illness has tapered off since. And good thing, too, since, NOAA scientists note, there is no known way to vaccinate dolphins against the disease.

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And to close with another well-liked species, whales aren’t having the easiest of times these days, owing to diseases of many kinds and human depredation, but also to pollution. Scientists at Baylor University, writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, have developed a novel way to gauge what those pollutants are: They’ve been studying the earwax of blue whales to determine chemical exposure. And not just the earwax of modern, free-ranging whales, but also that of whales gathered more than half a century ago, which shows, as one might expect, how things have declined in the decades since.

"Service Animal" Scammers (New Yorker): An increasing number of your neighbors have been keeping company with their pets in human-only establishments simply by claiming that the creatures are their licensed companion animals and are necessary to their mental well-being.

Why London’s pig café pop-up is a terrible idea for pigs: Teacup pigs are adorable. Unfortunately, they’re also a complete fabrication. But that isn’t stopping a local London specialty breeder and Yelp from putting on an adoption event to educate the public on “proper” micro pig care.